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Perfecting Technique

I am struggling to articulate why we train to perfect our techniques as an art yet acknowledge that when we have to fight for self defence we acknowledge we will look rough, far from the perfection we aim for in kihon or kata.

I personally, am comfortable with the idea that the two contexts are poles apart. But, I just dont' know how to explain it to others, who are not yet open to practical and pragmeatic martial arts for self defence but stuck in sport karate mode.

perfecting the techniques through constant practise is vital in my eyes. It is all about body structure and how to use the body correct to be as effective as possible in regards to stability, mobility, power generation and so on.

For example, everyone can hit you with a fist, but not everyone can hit you hard.

Here's the way I explain it when I'm teaching: In the unfortunate situation that you find yourself attacked to a point where you have to use your martial arts, fear and adrenaline are going to take over instantly. With these acting on you, about 75% of what you know about combat and self defense is going to go out the window. So by practicing and striving for 100% (or perfection), we give out self the ability to spit out as much of that 25% as we can, should we have to use our skills.

The process of learning karate or learning any skill at all as a matter of fact is strongly analgous to the process of learning to be a professional instrumentalist.

If you imagine yourself as a concert pianist, you have a huge amount of extremely complex and detailed actions to perform - you only get one chance, and you are under enormous stress and adrenalised pressure. You practise scales and arpeggios (kihon), endless technical studies built out of scales and arpeggios as well as other technical demands, and put them together in a piece (kata). You need to rehearse, you need to practise what it is like to be under pressure of a performance, and utlimately you need experience. A concert pianist practises up to 8 hours a day for years and years - far more than any martial artist, in order to overcome the technical challenges that leave them free to express themselves under pressure.

But in the heat of the moment, the detail and accuracy you painstakingly slaved over for years learning a piece falls away, its less accurate and nuanced, but all that effort in trying to attain that gives you self-control and self-mastery that allows you to still project the intent and meaning of a piece. You can react to subtle changes in the situation, a slower tempo, a longer pause.

What you are looking for is a deep understanding, both of your technique and of the piece, that only comes from time and extremely deep and detailed study, so that you understand both on a deeper level than merely the notes. The same is true for karate or any martial art - you need a deep understanding of how your body moves, and why you should move it in a certain way, so that your mind is freed of the responsibility when it is under pressure.

In short the analogy would be the comparison between two musicians playing the same piece - who would be more accomplished - the master or the novice, even if both played the same notes?

I am struggling to articulate why we train to perfect our techniques as an art yet acknowledge that when we have to fight for self defence we acknowledge we will look rough, far from the perfection we aim for in kihon or kata.

I personally, am comfortable with the idea that the two contexts are poles apart. But, I just dont' know how to explain it to others, who are not yet open to practical and pragmeatic martial arts for self defence but stuck in sport karate mode.

Any help appreciated.

The responses so far are excellent, but I would just add that divorcing technique and form from the idea of aesthetics, or looks, is vital.

Form is about your balance and the relationship between that balance and your transmission of power, i.e preventing over commitment. It is about maintaining defencive posture and the relationship between defencive guard and offencive techniques. Form in short is about all the practical details of body use that differentiate a martial artist; someone who has used reason and practice to devise effective methods of using the body for combative puroses, from a flailing unco-ordinated un-trained individual.

How it looks is just an incidental side point.

Thus our aim in perfecting technique is making the efficient and precise methods of using our body as much the everyday norm as is possible. The aim is to make Karate not something you choose when you fight, Karate is just how you fight, in the same way your stride length is just how you run.

As I understand things this can only be achieved by repetition and as a result the doing has to be more than the perfecting. By this I mean that endless adjustment over small details is in my view counter productive. Decide on a right way to do x and then do x, over and over again.

For me, its similar to Ian's podcast on Context. For me, we must define what "perfecting technique" really means. I started in a very traditional school, and "perfecting" technique meant looking very karate-ish, ie focusing on what the stance really looked like at the end of techniques. (as a side note, I am now at a school (same style) where the focus is more on the motion of the technique, and more application based. Ironically, I found my technique tends to look more fluid and I can deliver more power and end of technique still looks karate-ish.)

I know other schools where "perfecting" technique is mostly focused on how effective it can be on street. They're not too concerned how front stance looks, more concerned on how that applies in a real confrontation.

I know other schools where "perfecting' technique means how it works in a sporting format, ie will the technique "score"?

I know a black belt who created kind of a karate-pilates where technique is used mainly as a body conditioning.

None are necessarily wrong or right, it just depends on your goals and how you define "perfecting"

I am struggling to articulate why we train to perfect our techniques as an art yet acknowledge that when we have to fight for self defence we acknowledge we will look rough, far from the perfection we aim for in kihon or kata … I just don’t' know how to explain it to others …

To keep it as simple as possible, I would explain it as follows:

Technique will deteriorate in the chaos of conflict. Low quality technique will deteriorate to ineffective nothingness. High quality ‘almost perfected’ technique will deteriorate to efficient situation-ending technique. Sure it won’t look as “nice” when applied “in the field”, but that’s not something we care about. We aim for perfection so we are left with highly-efficient in the imperfect world of real conflict.

There are many other very important related issues – such as the need to embrace the chaos, train against resistance, etc. – but to keep it super simple, I would explain it as per the paragraph above.